Many human activities are conducted in environments where the presence of a table for refreshment purposes is not feasible. Probably foremost among these environments is the automobile, where an average person often spends appreciable amounts of time. Other such environments are workshops and crowded computer work stations. Because a person often spends considerable time in these places, he usually wants to consume liquid refreshment while he is occupied with his driving or working. The average automobile has little or no flat space in which to set a beverage container such as a glass, can or cup. Similarly, even though a workbench or a computer work station may have flat surfaces, they are usually crowded, and spilled beverages can create a major problem.
It is desirable, then, to have a device which could hold a beverage container in an environment such as these. Many devices have been contrived to serve this need. Most often, they incorporate a gimbaled mount of some kind with a holder suspended from a single point. Sometimes these devices can mount directly to an environmental surface, and sometimes they require that a permanent mounting fixture be mounted on the surface prior to hanging the drink holder from the fixture. This latter method has the obvious disadvantage that the beverage holder cannot be moved from one place to another without first installing a new mounting fixture.
The devices which can be mounted directly to an environmental surface are usually somewhat limited to surfaces having a given orientation. This is because they can only be adjusted about one, two or three axes of rotation. Depending upon the surface to which the drink holder is attached, this limited scheme of adjustment may leave the drink holder too high or low, tilted at an angle or out of position horizontally. When the available surfaces are severely limited, such as in an automobile, the inability to properly adjust the drink holder may make it useless.
Another disadvantage suffered by most known drink holders is that they are awkward and relatively bulky, consuming valuable space even when not in use. It would be helpful to be able to fold up a drink holder into a minimum amount of space when it is not in use. This can also be helpful in packaging the device for sale.